Oury Jalloh

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Oury Jalloh, a 36 year-old refugee from Sierra Leone died by a fire on 7 January 2005, in a police station in Dessau, tied with handcuffs to a fire-proof mattress at his hands and feet. The cause of death was officially recorded as heat shock.

The court case

Judical results of determinations:

Chronicle
8:30 am: Oury Jalloh gets admitted in the police station of Dessau, two police officers observe him in the examination room (custody range)
8:45 am: Oury Jalloh gets searched by the police officer Hans-Ulrich M. in the examination room of the Dessau' police station
9:10 to 9:30 am: medical inspection and blood sample taking of Oury Jalloh, who is already there tied with handcuffs to the examination table at his hands and feet
9:30 am: Oury Jalloh gets transferred to cellar 5 and gets tied with handcuffs to the mattress at his hands and feet
10:00 am: controll of the cell, there Oury Jalloh was found oriented and communicated with the police officers
10:03 am: controll by another police officer who found Oury Jalloh sleeping or simulated sleeping
10:30 am: leading patrol officer Beate H. switched on the intercom system
10:37 am: newly cell controll by a police officer without any anomalies found
11:05 am: after clacking sounds from the cell two officers controlled the cell again and spoke with Oury Jalloh
11:45 am: Beate H. decided to check the cell. When Jalloh complained about his shackles being too tight, she answered saying she had no authority to do anything and went back upstairs again.
shortly before 12:00 pm: Oury Jalloh cries and calls for assistance. The reaction of Andreas S. consisted of turning down the volume on the intercom system. Beate H. is said to have immediately turned the volume back up
from 12:04 pm to 12:09 pm: the smoke alarm in Jalloh’s cell went on. Beate H. described what then happened. Patrol group leader Andreas S. switched off the alarm. But the alarm immediately started again. He picked up the cell key and switched off the alarm a second time. She asked him to hurry up. At this instant, the smoke detector sounded from the corridor in front of the cells.

Andreas S. then started to move downstairs, telling the colleague Mö. to come with him. When the two officers opened the cell door, dense black smoke poured out.
12:09 to 12:11 pm: efforts to get into the cell and rescue Oury Jalloh failed through the strong smoke emission
12:11 pm: while Andreas S. turned round and ran back upstairs, calling for a fire extinguisher, his colleague grabbed a blanket and ran into the cell, where he saw a man lying burning on the mattress. He was unable to determine whether he was still alive; he was also unable to release him as he did not have the keys.

Beate H. informs the rescue coordination center about the fire.
12:18 pm: the ambulance of the red cross arrives at the police station
12:20 pm: the fire brigade arrives at the police station
12:21 pm: first fire fighters arrive in the basement, later two times further fire fighters get into the basement
12:35 pm: the fire brigade recovers the burning dead body of Oury Jalloh, immediately they put out the fire

Antinomies and inconsistences in the police accounts

• in the first of four statements given by Beate H., she said that Andreas S. switched off the fire alarm two times and first went to the cell of Oury Jalloh after the smoke detector sounded from the corridor in front of the cells, which she later "qualified" closer to the version of Andreas S.
• accordingly to Andreas S. he went immediately after the first fire alert turned on for the first time to look after Oury Jalloh, which stands contrary to Beate H.'s first statement
• accordingly to Andreas S. he called police men Kö. from the gatehouse, which was disproved by the statements of other police men (this question is of high interest for the time table)
• accordingly to Hans-Ulrich M. he was between 11:30 am and 12:10 in the cafeteria, which could not been confirmed by other police men, also his statement that he tried to put out the fire nobody could confirm
• Beate H. several times stated that at 11:30 she heard through the intercom system sounds like there was another controll in the cell no 5, which stood not in the custody book, in the judical examination she tries to evade this question several times after long time of thinking about that, she answers on the question by the lawyer, if yes or no with yes

Central questions the legal process left open

• 1. What happened really in the police cell no 5?
• 2. How it came to the fire?

In a reconstruction of the fire the court's goal was to proof, wether Oury Jalloh was able to remove a lighter from the trouser pockets or from inside the underwear, to set fire to the “highly flammable” filling of the mattress. For the shackled police officer this was only possible under enormous acrobatic efforts. He only needed to hold the lighter underneath the prepared hole of the mattress, for long enough. How Oury Jalloh shall unseamed the fire proofed cleading of the mattress was not a subject of the determination, in the reconstruction itself the hole was cutted with a 20 cm long sharp item.

• 3. What about the injuries recovered during the second autopsy?